


Shadows Cast by Flames

by Aeronomatron



Series: Crack in the Glass [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Dystopia, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Sort of? - Freeform, poor baby akemi :(
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:28:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29516715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeronomatron/pseuds/Aeronomatron
Summary: Akemi's never considered himself very lucky. Maybe it's karma, maybe it's some god that thinks it's funny to make his life miserable. He's been waiting for the tides to change for nineteen years now, and he's starting to give up hope.
Series: Crack in the Glass [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2168346





	Shadows Cast by Flames

**Author's Note:**

  * For [16Pixels](https://archiveofourown.org/users/16Pixels/gifts).



> had this just lying around in my drafts and I was like fuck it I'm posting this shit

Akemi really hadn't meant to take a detour that had led up to him spending an extra hour on what was supposed to be a fifteen minute trip, but his excuse was that he'd seen something shiny - not even just metaphorically - and he wanted it. And he was gonna have it.

You know, like a crow. Only Akemi is much better at pickpocketing than a crow.

He is _very_ good at what he does, only his unwitting victims this time belonged to someone who he had run into before and had most definitely _not_ forgiven and forgotten. Then again, he really should have expected it. All the residents of the Junkyards are selfish assholes, him included.

So he ran and kept running until he had shaken them and was also slightly lost. Then by a very unfortunate stroke of luck he had run into them again, and had to start the entire chase sequence over. Finally he was able to lose them in the shadier parts of the place, but that was a ways away from where he needed to be.

Thus began the long and perilous journey back, and Akemi managed to not only keep himself from being slaughtered and dismantled for parts, but also hang on to his precious cargo, rightfully stolen from men he considered thugs.

They were probably part of a gang or something anyway.

As he approaches the nondescript door tucked into the cozy space between two large apartment buildings, he feels the implant on his chest shudder and let out a soft whirr.

"Shit," Akemi mutters, feeling heat build under his thin shirt. It would pass, but he needed to be in a safe place while he rode out the burnout.

The warmth becomes dangerously close to scalding as he taps in the passcode into a little keypad by the door and quickly slips through the doorway, kicking the door shut behind himself.

Heat radiates from his core, creeping along his body until it feels like he's on fire, every nerve set alight with both phantom and actual sensations. Of course it wasn't quite hot enough to actually sear his insides but the stifling heat within lets his imagination run wild.

With a snap and a hiss, the emergency vents open, releasing curls of smoke into the air. Something smells like it's fried, but the temperature of his core quickly goes down, and Akemi draws in a shaky breath. He's, well, relatively stable now, but he'll need to get the damaged part fixed quickly or he'll have some more serious issues in store in the near future.

"Hey. Kid." The rough rasp of a deep voice makes him glance up. "You alright?"

"Zack," Akemi croaks. His throat feels dry. "Yeah, I'm fine."

The older man holds out a hand and Akemi takes it, getting to his feet. He stoops down to grab his precious cargo, which had tumbled a couple feet away from him when he'd had his burnout.

"You should have come back sooner. You could have died if you burned out sooner." Zack shakes his head, uttering a short, exasperated phrase in another language before beckoning. "Come on, let's get your core fixed up."

"I was fine," Akemu begins, and a new, metallic voice interrupts.

"Fine? Y'know rats have got better survival instincts," Voltex, Zack's personal AI, chirps cheerfully from Zack's phone. "Maybe you're not as perceptive as a rat, is that it?"

Akemi suppresses a groan. "We needed another power cell. No way we can afford that shit at the ridiculous prices brand new ones are, and any old cell I find discarded will be too shitty to make use of. It was important." He hefts the power cell, a slightly scratched up thing that otherwise looked rather pristine.

Zack barks out a laugh, but it quickly turns into a wet, rasping cough as his breath grows shorter. He fumbles a little for a metallic face mask looking contraption and claps it over his mouth, inhaling deeply.

When his coughs have subsided, he puts the mask away and takes a wheezing breath, air rattling in his lungs. "Well now. Let's see if we can put that to use, now that we have it."

Akemi frowns. “I thought you were supposed to wear that all the time?” He points to the mask as Zack tucks it away.

“To be fair, he is not very good at following directions,” Voltex intones with the voice one’s parent might use to explain something to a small child.

“Shut up, I created you, I can delete your existence.” Zack is already heading down the short corridor to the slightly open door at the end.

The interior of Zack’s humble abode is as familiar to Akemi as the back of his hand after living with Zack in it for several months. He still breathes in deeply, taking in the subtle odor of cinnamon that seems to be infused into the air. A pot bubbles on the rickety little stove shoved in the corner of a tiny kitchen and Zack hurries over to turn down the heat, and the aroma of cinnamon is quickly overtaken by seasoned meat.

Akemi shuts the door and locks it behind him as he pads past the kitchen and into the main room. It’s cozy, with a worn couch tucked against one wall and an outdated but still working widescreen TV on the other. Rugs are piled on the floor, and there’s a tiny window way up near the ceiling. There’s a hammock strung up just under it, and Akemi likes to take naps there when the sun slants in just right.

Farther down is Zack’s little workshop where he builds his machines and codes his programs. It’s cramped, what space on his desk not taken up by a massive computer littered with papers. The walls are stacked with parts and a couple tools are scattered around the room. Unfinished projects lay everywhere, turning the floor into a metaphorical minefield that Zack somehow feels comfortable navigating on a daily basis.

For a technical genius, Zack doesn’t make much. Despite having created dozens of unique AI and other such programs, only a few are up to buy, and what clients are willing to pay have been down lately when you’re not well known. A single unlucky moment and Zack’s stuck here now, with all his problems and illnesses.

It doesn’t feel like he’s too bitter about it, though. Akemi would have been livid upon learning that he could have lived a life of luxury and comfort, yet was forced into scavenging the Junkyards for things to sell and use.

Zack is a strange person.

Akemi pushes open the door to his room, a tiny, spare room that barely has enough space for him to walk five steps in any direction. It’s more like a closet than anything, with a little cot and a couple shelves to put his things. Not that he had much to store anyway.

Most things in Zack’s home are minimal. The sleeping rooms don't have much in terms of decoration, and all of the walls are an off-white that have clearly never been painted over more than twice.

He sets the power cell gently on a shelf and flops back on his cot, wrinkling his nose as the smoky smell mixes with the cinnamon. Zack doesn’t like him poking around the workshop, and he tends to get fidgety when he’s bored. He’ll get called over to be fixed.

“Hey, kid. How are you holding up?” As if the mere thought of him could summon the man, Zack appears at the door.

“Fine, I guess.” Akemi sits up, pulling his shirt over his head to let Zack take a look at the core.

The metal is warm to touch, its surface worn with scuff marks but obviously well cared for. Within the central ring, orange glows in Akemi’s chest, with his inner fire protected by a thick, clear covering. Akemi is sure it’s some kind of titanium alloy.

It’s not like Damian to give him something that’s not state of the art. Still, it’s also never been possible before to remove a human’s heart and keep them alive using only machines, and so while on paper, the core seemed fine, but when it was implemented, there were a host of issues.

Good thing Damian had a labrat to test it on, then.

If the eternal, false flame in Akemi stops burning, he’ll die. Simple as that. And maybe this was a sign that humans and machines were never supposed to mesh together like this, because the core would constantly burn out due to some imbalance in his body or other problem. The flame always flickers and wavers, and one day Akemi’s worried he’ll be devoured by the heat that kept him alive.

“Stay here or the workshop?” Zack asks gruffly.

“Here, I guess. If it’s not too inconvenient.”

“Not a problem.” The older man sets to carefully removing the protective pane, lifting it away. A gentle wave of heat radiates from the exposed, flickering core.

The outermost layer goes next, exposing the wiring and all the little circuits and tubes that keep Akemi up and running. Akemi wrinkles his nose as the smoky, fried smell becomes stronger, and it’s immediately apparent why. Two of the smaller wires are blackened and twisted, but Zack says nothing as he pulls out a pair of tweezers and starts to replace them.

The repair is easy and quick, and as Zack clips the shorted wires, the core hums and the glow brightens. Akemi sighs when the pane is fitted back on, wiping some sweat from his forehead.

“...thanks.”

“No need to thank me, kid. Just doing what I can. Dinner’s ready, by the way, you should go eat,” Zack wheezes, clapping the mask over his lower face with one hand as he stands and takes the power cell off the shelf with his other. The wet sounds of his coughs echo down the hall as he heads to his workshop.

Akemi touches his core gently. Reverently.

* * *

There’s always sunlight, but there’s never really moonlight. The permanent haze over the city makes sure of that.

Maybe if a once-proud country wasn’t turned into a giant dumpster for all the tech trash, the city would still be beautiful. As it stands, the only aesthetics to marvel at are manmade - the soulless abstract sculptures and street art, maybe some graffiti in the shady parts. The high end will have some elegant buildings, swooping skyscrapers, lovely fountains. There are little to no natural parks.

It’s hard to care about nature when caring about where your next meal is going to come from is the priority for most of the unfortunate living here.

Akemi is curled in the hammock, staring out of the little windows. The view never changes. It’s always the same, worn apartment, its grimy barred windows and scratched walls layered with a cheap paint job and some graffiti. There’s a thin, stray dog curled up under the tiny overhang of a window, its ribs jutting out.

Someone approaches the building and the dog scampers off. Akemi watches the person through half-lidded eyes, a rough-cut man with wide shoulders and a face like that of a weathered statue, expression stony and unchanging. Scars litter his upper arms and his left is a prosthetic from the elbow down.

It’s not sleek and compact like his core. It’s made of mismatched scrap, screwed with differently sized screws, with wiring visible all along the inside of the fake forearm.

It’s all anyone not living a life of luxury in the high end can afford these days.

The man disappears into the building and Akemi loses interest in him. Sure, he’s got a false arm. Who doesn’t? There’s almost no one left that’s fully human anymore. He knows. He used to be one. Now he’s just as much of a hybrid as everyone else is.

It sucks. But he feels bad for the ones that are still one hundred percent human, the ones that aren’t deformed and have all their limbs functional and fleshy. There will always be the greedy, the rich that are looking to profit by stealing those limbs away and making some quick cash off their parts that are still very distinctly human. They’ll be hunted all their lives by the ones who never knew the feeling of being so whole.

Akemi shifts around, staring up at the ceiling. He’s lucky to be born without any defects. He’s lucky, he’s lucky, he’s lucky.

He’s not lucky. He knows that now.

“Kid.”

He turns his head. Zack is a dark silhouette against the sharp brightness of his workshop.

“What?”

“Why aren’t you asleep?”

“Just… had a lot on my mind.” Akemi puts a hand on his core. The familiar heat pulsing from it soothes him.

“Don’t overthink things. Let ‘em be. There’s no point in putting in more brainpower than necessary.”

“Oh, I guess you’d know a thing or two about that?” the younger man jokes, and Zack raises an eyebrow, though it goes unnoticed in the darkness.

“He has me when he runs into an issue like that,” Voltex chimes in. “You don’t have such a smart personal AI, firework.”

“Thank you for implying you cover up my stupidity.” Zack pauses. “If this is about you living with me here, I promise you won’t be here forever. This is no place for someone like you who still has a huge chunk of their life ahead of them to stay.”

Akemi flops around, causing the hammock to swing wildly until he settles in a new position. “Where would I go, then? Daybreaker is long gone. And I’m… I’m afraid of living by myself. Of being lonely.”

“If he had such a wonderful AI as I with him, I’m sure he’d be fine.” Voltex makes a noise that sounds somewhat like a disdainful sniff.

“Not everyone wants an AI for company.”

“ _Well,_ it’s not like you had actual friends either. Isn’t that why you made me?”

Zack’s sigh is a long, rattly breath.

“Sorry, but I think I agree with Zack here. I’d rather have someone who’s a human,” Akemi says to the AI. Voltex makes an offended noise.

“I’m sure someone from Daybreaker would take you in.” Zack flicks a lamp on, casting a warm yellow glow over everything, and sits down on a couch. It’s not like Akemi’s gonna get any sleep soon. “It doesn’t have to be all of them.”

“Thing is, I’m afraid of even contacting them. We knew Damian would be searching for us, so we decided it’s best to split up so he can’t just find all of us at once. We agreed to only get together for emergencies.”

“So you’re stuck laying low here-” Zack’s words cut abruptly as he starts to cough, and he fishes out his respirator and inhales deeply. “I already knew you were staying away from them for a reason. But I guess you guys were just really shaken up by that entire thing with Damian. I’d be traumatized, too, if I had to go through all that. I’d need some alone time to think things over.”

“I… well, I don’t mind living here. Except maybe Voltex.” The remark earns a mechanical scoff from the AI.

“Look, kid. I don’t understand all the decisions you’ve made, but you can’t close your options off like this. I’m not a good way out. And besides, what if you get found? You’d have to go to them anyway.”

“I’ll burn that bridge when I cross it.”

“Kid… alright, well, I can only suggest a path. You’ll have to decide where to go from here. All I’m saying is that you can’t - and shouldn’t - just hide here forever.”

Zack gives him a hard look, and Akemi is just glad that he didn’t get pity instead. Just because he’s barely nineteen, people think he’s this poor little thing, and it’s refreshing for Zack to just treat him like what he is - a hardened survivor.

“Get some sleep.” The older man huffs into the respirator again, flicking the lamp off and retreating into his workshop. Akemi watches him go, mind whirling.

He misses Daybreaker so much it hurts. God, he wants it all to be like it was before - him as part of a big, happy family of whole-humans (except Ghost, of course, but he included them all the same), taking the odd jobs that come along and proving they’re just as capable as all the prosthetic-enhanced ones, with his older brothers and sisters.

But it can’t. Damian made sure of that.

Akemi tosses and turns late into the night, and when he finally slips into unconsciousness, memories of his ‘family’ swim behind his eyes, remnants of good times long past smoothing out the creases in his forehead and softening his face so that he looked truly at peace for the first time since Daybreaker shattered.

Zack just looks on fondly.


End file.
